Yemen’s al-Qaida threatens US hostage in new video
5 Dec 2014 11:39 PM GMT
The hostage, identified as 33-year-old Luke Somers, an American photojournalist born in Britain, is featured for the first time in the video, posted on the al-Qaida offshoot’s Twitter account and first reported by SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant sites.
The video mimicked some of those used by al-Qaida rivals from the Islamic State group, which has beheaded several American and British hostages in the aftermath of a summer blitz that captured much of Iraq and Syria. The IS fighters have at times battled al-Qaida and prompted defections among their rivals.
Somers was kidnapped in September 2013 from a street in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, where he had worked as a photojournalist for the Yemen Times. Since his capture, Yemeni journalists have been holding sit-ins in Sanaa to press the government to seek his release.
Somers was likely among a group of hostages who were the objective of a joint rescue mission by US operation forces and Yemeni troops last month that freed eight captives in a remote corner of Yemen’s Hadramawt province.
At the time, a Yemeni official said the mission, carried out in a vast desert area dotted with dunes called Hagr al-Saiaar, an al-Qaida safe haven not far from the Saudi border, failed to liberate five others, including an American journalist and a Briton who were moved elsewhere by their al-Qaida captors days before the raid. The American was not identified by name and Yemen did not officially confirm the participation of US commandos in the rescue mission - a rare instance of US forces intervening on the ground in Yemen.
The video mimicked some of those used by al-Qaida rivals from the Islamic State group, which has beheaded several American and British hostages in the aftermath of a summer blitz that captured much of Iraq and Syria. The IS fighters have at times battled al-Qaida and prompted defections among their rivals.
Somers was kidnapped in September 2013 from a street in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, where he had worked as a photojournalist for the Yemen Times. Since his capture, Yemeni journalists have been holding sit-ins in Sanaa to press the government to seek his release.
Somers was likely among a group of hostages who were the objective of a joint rescue mission by US operation forces and Yemeni troops last month that freed eight captives in a remote corner of Yemen’s Hadramawt province.
At the time, a Yemeni official said the mission, carried out in a vast desert area dotted with dunes called Hagr al-Saiaar, an al-Qaida safe haven not far from the Saudi border, failed to liberate five others, including an American journalist and a Briton who were moved elsewhere by their al-Qaida captors days before the raid. The American was not identified by name and Yemen did not officially confirm the participation of US commandos in the rescue mission - a rare instance of US forces intervening on the ground in Yemen.
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